The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution (Canto) [Hardcover]

Christopher R. Browning (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 26, 1992 | Series: Canto

The Path to Genocide studies three aspects of the events leading up to the Final Solution in Nazi Germany. First, Nazi's "solutions" to their self-imposed "Jewish problem" before resorting to mass-murder are examined, specifically ghettoization and early resettlement plans to expel Jews to Eastern Poland or the island of Madagascar. Second, the responsibility of shaping Nazi Jewish policy is shown to extend to the lower and middle echelon of government, through accommodation and conformity of a wide variety of perpetrators, including bureaucrats, doctors and policemen. Finally the role of Adolf Hitler in the decisionmaking process is examined, with a historiographical analysis of other accounts of his role. Browning argues that while Hitler did not operate according to a premeditated plan or blueprint, he did make the key decisions. This volume of essays provides perspectives on German Jewish policy both from the bottom of the government apparatus and from the top.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...a handy stocktaking of scholarship on some key questions about the Holocaust." Central European History

"...the clarity as well as economy with which he writes, his firm grasp of the evidence and the balanced judgment he brings to its interpretation make this a most impressive performance....[Browning] uses his flair for uncovering new archival material to throw light on the attitudes and roles of a variety of people who became invlved in carrying out the Final Solution....Christopher Browning places himself in the front rank of historians of the Holocaust." Times Literary Supplement

"...well written, densely footnoted, and a significant contribution to understanding the critical events that led to the gas chambers." German Studies Review

"A magisterial, rigorously meditated study of how the industrialized murder of millions got under way." The New York Times Book Review

"...an impressive collection of essays by one of the foremost historians of the Holocaust." Dimensions

"Browning's arguments provide a sensible balance to those interpretations of the origins of the Holocaust that have focused exclusively on either Hitler or the Nazi system." Johnpeter Horst Grill, History

"A meticulously researched, harrowing look at the evil humanity is capable of." Doug Wyatt, Savannah (GA) News/Press

Book Description

The Nazi Holocaust haunts the modern imagination as one of the most compelling examples of the human capacity for organized atrocity. This authoritative account of Nazi Jewish policy seeks to determine what actually happened between the outbreak of war and the emergence of the Final Solution.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (June 26, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521417015
• ISBN-13: 978-0521417013
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #663,616 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Christopher R. Browning is the Frank Porter Graham Professor of History at the University of North Carolina and the author of Ordinary Men and other outstanding works of Holocaust history. He lives in Chapel Hill.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Decision to Kill: How it was Taken., June 19, 2000

By 

Sérgio Luis Mota Miranda - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution (Canto original series) (Paperback)

Browning's book is one of the best books I have ever read about the Holocaust. It is a must for any researcher on this theme, new one or advanced. The most important topic of the book, dealt in several chapters, is the question of when, how, why and by whom the final solution command or order was taken.

Browning is very specific in his research. There are no guessings, though we can not escape from not being able to give final answer to certain details. He works with data of documents in trying to track how the decision to kill was taken. He is able to get to the point of saying the most probable dates for the final decision by Hitler.

The book presents some answers and alternatives to the question. It analyses 'functionalism' and 'intentionalism' and theories of historians like Arno Mayer, which by the way sufers heavy critics by Browning. You will surely refer back to this book after reading it when discussing the subject of the decision making process of the Holocaust.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb Summation Of Natural History Of The Holocaust!, September 12, 2002

By 

Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution (Canto original series) (Paperback)

In an eight-essay series originally devised as lectures, the author takes the reader deep into the hearts and minds of the men who engineered and perpetrated the Holocaust. As in his earlier work, he argues persuasively and with an army of facts and figures that the decision to eradicate all of Europe's Jews from the face of the planet was an incrementally derived decision. This argument is very much like that made by Gerhard Weinberg in his massively documented history of WWII, "A World At Arms", although Browning's argument involves a much more detailed and substantiated thread of evidence and circumstance. Weinberg posited that it wasn't until the Wehrmacht began to have horrendous logistics problems early in the occupation of Poland, Latvia, and Estonia during Operation Barbarossa that they began to think in terms of a systematic and deliberate program of extermination of the Jews.

Until that point the Nazi command had been more favorably disposed toward using indigenous populations as slave labor and working and/or starving them to death, rather than killing them outright. Here too Browning argues about three key issues surrounding the decision to proceed with the Holocaust; first, that the Nazi hierarchy itself was divided in terms of strategy and objectives about the resolution of the "Jewish Question"; second, that it was seen as highly advantageous to the national socialist cause to employ their skills and labor as long as possible in support of the war effort, and finally, that the actual implementation of the fragmented policy was further fragmented and "ad-libbed" at the field level by local commanders or police authorities.

Browning uses a virtual flood of documentation and data to substantiate his various positions, and marshals a convincing argument on behalf of the notion that indeed the resulting mass murders of the Holocaust were more likely the production of a series of small but fateful conclusions made incrementally to solve immediate and pressing logistical and tactical situations the Nazi hierarchy faced at particular moments than it was the result of some long-standing grand and evil scheme to systematically annihilate the Jews. Of course, it is in one very real sense an academic issue, since all of the indigenous Jews (as well as everyone else in the areas of interest to the Nazis along the eastern front in Poland and the Ukraine already pre-designated as new settlement areas for Germans would die at the hands of the Nazi regime. The question at hand is whether the actual extermination of those individuals would be accomplished through slave labor, starvation, and exposure to the elements, or through more active and murderous intervention by way of the death camps.

One must also remember that there were also large numbers of German Jews being transported both within and without the country to concentration camps. The same issues of intent apply to them, as well. Certainly Browning's efforts here will not end the long-standing debate. It is, however, a critical contribution to informing the direction and future tenor of that argument. This is an important, provocative, and worthwhile book, and one anyone interested in understanding the details of the "natural history' of how the Holocaust actually came to transpire must read to understand the complexities, contradictions, and confusions abounding in both the record and in individual recollections about the time. I recommend this book, and hope it is much more widely read and appreciated.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars German reaction to execution orders: a fascinating essay, April 28, 2004

By 

Kate Smart "Private" (Private) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution (Canto original series) (Paperback)

There is one essay in this collection which finally answered some I questions I have always had, namely - how did the average German policeman, soldier or army major, react to the orders to kill innocent Jews? This essay is entitled, "One Day in Jozefow" and it held me spellbound. It details what occured on July 13, 1942, a day of executions under the command of Major Wilhelm Trapp. He gave orders to murder women and children with tears in his eyes and was later seen "weeping like a child".

His subordinates held him in contempt, especially since he was never seen at the shooting sites. He is quoted as saying, "If this Jewish business is ever avenged on earth, then have mercy on us Germans". There were sergeants who also requested to be excused from the firing squads, as the idea of slaughtering human beings proved too horrendous to carry out. The Germans who carried out the executions were given alcohol to help with their agitation. It was decided "intolerable" to carry out the slaughter while sober. Some ran into the forest to vomit, others were so wracked with nervousness, they misfired. At the end of the day, some 1500 Jews lay dead.

What is so compelling about this essay is that is explains how these German battalions were later able to round up Jews to the gas chambers with relative detachment; there was so much less participation or responsibility (compared to shooting)and the men had become desensitized. In fact, historians have shown that the camps were constructed largely to spare the German executioners the trauma of face-to-face murder.

What is fascinating is this: it has been long believed that Germans who refused to carry out executions feared for their own lives. Not necessarily true. When Major Trapp let his aversion to the killings be known he was relocated and later promoted. In the case of Jozefow, the men had the opportunity to withdraw from shooting. Why didn't they refuse? Because they did not want to seem cowardly and they wanted to be promoted. The ones who refused generally had businesses back home to rely on and didn't care about being promoted. And some did business with Jews, so their animosities were not inflamed.
This essay is riveting. I give this book 3 stars because the other readings are so dry, so long-winded, and so devoid of emotion, that you find yourself reading the same sentence five times. History MUST be exciting to read - otherwise, no one reads it, which is a dangerous thing indeed.